Sunrise in Rajasthan is quite spectacular due to (relatively) unpolluted air and clear skies. We rode out of Jaisalmer  before sunrise, hoping to put in some kilometers of riding in the couple of cool hours we had before the sun got to its full glory. This is one of the views we had, out on the highway from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur.

By now we had been told quite a few times by locals to visit the temple at Ramdeora (aka Ramdevera). The route from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur, involved going back 100 kms through Ramdeora and then taking a deviation towards Jodhpur. We decided to give the temple a visit.

On the way we caught up with an old man, who was on an India pilgrimage tour on a cycle! A handwritten board on the cycle said that. He even obliged to stop for some pictures with us.

We were about 50 odd kms from Jaisalmer, when we had the trip’s first breakdown. Abhi was passing a truck with enough space to go through before the truck on the opposite side got close. But as usual, the trucker on our side din’t let us through and Abhi had to slow down from quite some speed to get back behind the truck to avoid being in the way of the vehicle opposite. As he braked, I heard a loud metallic scraping sound – we had had a rear brake failure right in the middle of an overtake! It was quite a scary situation but Abhi managed to slow the vehicle down and got a pat on the back from me for not losing his presence of mind at that point 🙂 We had to stop and fix it before heading to our next stop for breakfast.

One of the things we noticed about all the eating joints we stopped at throughout Rajasthan – No matter what time of the day, the food that was ordered was prepared fresh. Although it did take a bit longer than usual, we did not mind, because first, we were not in a hurry and second, when the food arrived, it was delicious 🙂

We arrived at Ramdevra at about 11.30 AM. Its a small desert town with main attraction being the temple with the same name dedicated to the saint Baba Ramdevji  (No, not the one on Aastha channel!) who took samadhi there. As we rode on towards the temple, the stretch that approached the temple had the same rock formations that we noticed on the way from Bikaner to Jaisalmer along with tons of footwear. It just got curiouser and curiouser! We realized that the rock formations that we had passed by a couple of days ago was on the other side of the same town, but we hadn’t realized it then. Loads of devotees were walking towards the temple, and most of them, including children and women were barefoot.

This was a quite shocking because the sun at that time was pretty sharp (40-43 degs in desert is not fun, trust me), forget walking barefoot, even walking in that heat was an effort. Most of them had the ‘Jai Mata Di’ flags as well, and like any other place, the devotees were in their colourful best. Especially the women in their beautiful Gaghras 🙂

We found a shop who obliged to watch our bike and our luggage while we were gone. We bought the offerings from the temple from him and even let him make the decision for us as to what we should offer. He told us that most people who visit this temple, often ask for a house, since most don’t have one. For this, people apparently walk to this temple, barefoot from their home towns (which we did see over the past three days), sometimes as far as Bangalore too!! Some devotees would build small house-like structures with stones that are lying around to symbolize their prayers and leave the footwear around the temple town after the visit to the temple as an offering to the saint to bestow their wishes upon them. The magnanimity of what we saw sunk in at that moment. We take so much of what we have for granted, but for people here, this meant so much that they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of leaving their footwear a brave the scorching sun barefoot. So humbling!

The shopkeeper had filled our offering basket with the usual paraphernalia of incense sticks, flowers, bananas, camphor, etc. along with some prayer flags. He instructed us that we tie these flags at the temple and make sure we prayed for whatever we wanted while we tied them. There was quite a crowd at the temple. Both of us were in our jeans and tees; while Abhi was alright and gelled right in, I stood out in that crowd of Gaghras 🙁 and for a brief moment I wasn’t sure if I wanted to enter the temple. As we got to the gates, I saw that the lines for women and men were separate although next to each other, which was a relief!

The temple itself was very simplistic, including the sanctum where the samadhi of the saint was. On the way into the Samadhi we tied the prayer flags (I guess I had a red one and Abhi had a green one, both with gold trimmings) and said our prayers. Once inside the samadhi, the separation ended, and we gave the offerings to the priest there. The samadhi or the resting place of the saint was done up in silver, still nothing very grandiose. The priest sprayed some holy water on both of us and blessed us with a bunch of peacock feathers. On our way out, we got the coconut halves, fruits and some flowers as the prashad.

We walked back to the shop where we had parked the bike. The shop had some crowd in front of it because the shopkeeper was telling everyone who cared to listen to him as to how we had traveled from Delhi through Rajasthan and that we were now travelling to other places in the state and riding down to Bangalore and that we had parked the bike there for him to take care of it 🙂 We geared up, thanked the shopkeeper, wished him well and headed out back to the highway towards Jodhpur.

We still had about 190 kms to get to Jodhpur and it was already 1 PM. We rode hard the next 100 kms stopping only to hydrate a couple of times. The landscape had slowly changed from barren desert lands to small trees and shrubs with some houses built of mud here and there. At about half past two we stopped for some food at what seemed like a small shack in the middle of nowhere. The old man who seemed to be the owner, offered to make us some Bajre ki Roti (Rotis made of pearl millet) if we were game, along with some normal rotis, Kadhi (A thick gravy made of chickpea flour), curd and pickle. This was as authentic as it could get in Rajasthan, and we were sure nothing that the heritage places could offer would match the simplicity of this meal. We loved every bite of it!

We learnt something more. The mud houses that we saw, were called ‘Dedh Din Ka Ghar’ which literally translates to ‘One and a half days’ Home’ – The old man told us that these temporary houses were built using just sand and water within one and a half days by people who don’t have a house and couldn’t afford any other housing material. Since sand was abundantly available, that was the only thing used. And the water that went into it must have taken some effort to source. We couldn’t ignore the stark contrast of tourists being ferried to some heritage destination in an A/C luxury vehicle on a highway, that had on either side, people living in dedh din ka ghar walking barefoot to fetch water from miles away!

A while later we were back on the highway and this time we rode non stop to reach Jodhpur. We did not have to worry about the stay that night in Jodhpur since Sachi uncle yet again had arranged for it in one of the guest houses. It had been a pretty hard ride and the only thing we could think of once we got into the room was rest.

And rest we did, since the next day we planned to ride 250 kms to Udaipur via the oldest jain temple in the world and the second greatest wall in the world after the wall of China.

Read on.